Last week, the Board of the Green Climate Fund (the "Fund") met in Bali, Indonesia. The Fund was designated as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ("UNFCCC"). The Fund's purpose is to promote, within the context of sustainable development, the "paradigm shift towards low-emission and climate-resilient development pathways by providing support to developing countries to help limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change." The United States and other industrialized countries at the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen pledged $100 billion a year to the Fund—from public and private sources—as climate aid beginning in 2020.

During the three-day meetings in Bali, the Fund's Board members agreed, among other things, that the Fund will aim for a 50:50 balance between mitigation and adaptation efforts and designate 50% of adaptation funding for "particularly vulnerable countries," including least developed countries, small island developing states and African states. The Board of the Fund also determined that it will maximize engagement with the private sector and be a leader on "gender mainstreaming" and will define its gender action plan in October 2014. Click here for a link to the press release.